Welcome to my blog. HIV prevalence is not a reliable indicator of sexual behavior because the virus is also transmitted through unsafe healthcare, unsafe cosmetic practices and various traditional practices. This is why many HIV interventions, most of which concentrate entirely on sexual behavior, have been so unsuccessful.

Perhaps people in rich countries like to believe that some of their country’s wealth supports people in developing countries. They may think too much money or too little money goes to developing countries and they may approve of development aid or they may disapprove. But they are less likely to realise that rich countries extract exponentially larger amounts of wealth from developing countries than they give in aid.

So instead of arguing for more aid money or less aid money or different ways of distributing it, people who feel strongly about development could lobby their governments to consider how rich countries could reduce the extent to which they impoverish poor countries. Below, I’ve compiled a list of 24 ways this could be done. This is what I call ‘development by omission’ and it will be noticed that every item in this list represents highly unethical behaviour, perhaps even criminal behaviour.

If rich countries stopped doing all or even some of the above, developing countries would be a lot better off. The paltry amounts of money spent on ‘aid’ would probably no longer be necessary. The number of people who live in poverty, suffer disease and other harm and who die unnecessarily as a result of rich countries’ practices of extracting wealth from developing countries could even seem like genocide. The list is by no means exhaustive.